Two Strokes of Heritage
by breadfly
Summary: It is difficult to be a heir, but even more difficult to be heir to a desert. GaaraHinata. Oneshot, hopeful.


Disclaimer: All characters and villages belong to Kishimoto. The desert belongs to God.

* * *

Two Strokes of Heritage

"Don't draw attention to yourself," Hiashi tells Hinata, with the confidence of a man who knows his daughter will do exactly that.

To Hanabi he says, "Do your best", knowing full well the younger girl will, also, do exactly that.

Hinata hasn't heard her father or, if she has, pretends not to notice a thing. She fixes her eyes, empty and full of stars, on the desert outside. The horse carriage moves in rhythmic bumps; the shapes of the sand are unchanging.

"Papa, why are we going to Sunagakure again?" It is Hanabi, not Hinata, who asks. The young shinobi is already fifteen and has blossomed into a powerful and captivating woman. She runs a finger over the edge of her kunai and tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

"Do you ever listen to me?" The reply is patient, doting. "Its Sunagakure's week-long Water Festival. Of course, there are also competitions. As the most powerful family among their allies, we are invited as guests of honours."

"Will we have to fight?" It is Hinata this time, not Hanabi.

"Perhaps." The reply is curt, dismissive.

"Do you want to fight?" Hanabi asks her sister. The question is loaded and Hinata doesn't reply immediately. She studies her sister carefully. Its funny, she thinks, how we have the same eyes but such different stares.

"Yes," she says, "I wouldn't mind."

The rest of the journey proceeds in silence; Hanabi with her ten sharp swords, Hiashi with his thoughts, Hinata with her window.

---

They arrive in Sunagakure to much fanfare - trumpets and bursts of colour that look like cheap genjutsu. Hinata cringes inwardly; she dislikes crowds, noises and somersaulting shinobi. Of course, Hanabi loves it all.

"Ohh look," she tugs at Hinata's sleeve, "A pyramid of summoned creatures! Looks like that poker-faced Kazekage does have a sense of humour!" Which reminds Hinata, where is Gaara? Shouldn't he be here to greet them?

As if reading her thoughts, the young Kage appears, dressed simply in a brown tunic and bleached toga, before their carriage. "Hyuuga Hiashi, Hyuuga Hinata, Hyuuga Hanabi," he says, looking briefly at each of them, "Welcome to Sunagakure. I hope you are familiar with the procedures."

The thin line of his mouth curls, smiles; his eyes do not.

"Kazekage Gaara," Hiashi bows slightly. He cannot shake off the indignance of having to regard this boy - eighteen, a year younger than Hinata - as a superior but is far too afraid of him to let it show. "Yes, I am familiar."

"Then my brother will show the three of you to your residences. The official ceremony begins at seven at the Temple of the Sand." With that, he turned around and dissolved into the crowd.

Kankuro stepped forward, addressing Hiashi, but keeping one eye on Hanabi, "Respectable sir, this way please." Hanabi returned his gaze coolly, her eyes saying, somewhat bemusedly, don't even think of it.

---

Hinata sat alone in her room and arranged her things. She hadn't brought much; just two sets of Hyuuga robes and her usual combat gear - a thick, lilac jacket and blue knee length tights. She probably wouldn't have to use them.

The room was spartan but homely - a rolled up tatami mat with a single, unlit lamp at its head. A dresser carved with desert flowers. A wide window that let in the cool, morning air.

In the room to her left, she heard scrapings and grumbles. No doubt Hanabi had begun redesigning the interior. Hinata sighed, feeling amazed that, after all this time, she bore no sliver of ill will towards her sister.

"Hinata, Hinata?!" There was a sharp knock on the wall.

"Yes, what is it?"

"Look out your window! You won't believe it!"

Hinata dashed to the window. Their residence was a street removed from the carnival. The music and patter of feet at the edge of her senses a muted cacophony and the people like little ants, with sweets and meat between their teeth.

A red and golden dragon rose above the stalls, hissing at the buskers and curling its tail around a gourd-shaped house.

"Its a genjutsu," Hinata replied, bored.

"Yes, yes, but its GORGEOUS, isn't it?"

Then Hinata saw something truly interesting.

Standing in an alley a few feet away from the dragon (people were trying to feed it now; firecrackers, cabbage, uncooked rice), stood Gaara and three young shinobi. One of them was directly facing him, looking fearful. The other two were beside him, staring up at the dragon with a mixture of awe and envy.

Gaara addressed the mischief-maker sternly, rapping him on the head with the flat of one hand but, from that distance, Hinata couldn't make out what he was saying. Suddenly, he lifted his eyes and looked straight at her. Frightened, she backed away from the window and closed it tight.

At 6.45, she slipped into the Hyuuga robe and rearranged her hair. There was another rap on the wall that signalled Hanabi was ready to go. Hinata stepped out of the room, into quiet of dusk.

---

At 6.45, Gaara put down a report and his calligraphy brush and took out a bottle of sake from his secret drawer. The ceremony was on the ground floor and he could be there in two seconds.

He thought about the afternoon; when he had found Kankuro's three students doing an illegal jutsu in an alley. Most probably taught by Kankuro himself. A twinge of irritation rose to his temples; not because illegal jutsus were, well, illegal, but because they hadn't been his students, so he had to be more delicate than he would have liked.

Would he truly have been harder on his own charges? It was something he wouldn't know; he had none.

He had been Kazekage for six years and was, technically, the longest-serving Kazekage ever. He had already died once, four months after induction (which would have made him the shortest-serving, he thought humourlessly, if Chiyo hadn't brought him back to life), and saved the village from utter destruction twice. Now, he would wear a nice dress and join in festivities. Something didn't seem quite right.

Someone had watched him in the alley. He had sensed it and, since it came from the official residences, he guessed it was Hinata. He had seen the girl during his first Chunnin exam; she had struck him as an awkward, pitiful creature.

---

Hanabi was more frightened than she let on. Most of the time, in fact. It was only pride that kept her from displaying it. Sometimes, she envied her sister. At least Hinata was never overestimated.

She stood in the shadow with her father as Hinata emerged from her room and felt envy course through her once more. That, and the fact that Hinata was beautiful.

"Hanabi, straighten your sister's robe." Hanabi looked Hinata once over and found no problem with it in the least. Obligingly, she stepped forward and tugged on the collar uselessly.

"Thank you," Hinata replied, smiling a real smile. With that, she strode right past her family and stepped out of the residence. There was no need for her to wait for any further instructions: the ceremony would only be attended by the present clan leader and his future heir.

Hinata stepped into the street and walked towards the nucleus of sound and colour, keeping her eyes down to prevent grit from getting in. She turned into the alleyway she had saw Gaara and the three children in earlier and walked to the end of it, to where it opened into the vast expanse of the desert.

Sinking to the ground, she bit her lip and cried.

"Aren't you supposed to be at the ceremony?" The question was soft, matter-of-fact. Not a hint of concern or reprise.

Hinata looked up and saw the Kazekage standing above her, dressed in black to blend in with the night. His arms were crossed over his chest and he fixed her with an intense, somewhat intrigued gaze.

Startled, she blinked back her tears and asked the first question that came to her mind, "Aren't _you_ supposed to be at the ceremony?" Shocked at her own boldness, she looked at her toes, blushing furiously.

"Bunshin," came the one-word answer and, before she could move, Gaara sat down on the floor right next to her.

Hinata instinctively drew her legs closer to herself and placed her palms on her knees - a pose she hoped was suitably respectful. Gaara waved his hand dismissedly, drawing a left knee up, indicating that she could adopt any pose she wished.

Hinata stuck to hers stubbornly. "Kazekage..."

"Call me Gaara." He said, not facing her. "Sabaku no Gaara." He said it like an afterthought.

They sat in silence for a long moment, Hinata growing steadily uneasy. The wind had took on a fiercer character, whipping the cloth drapes of the windows and stalls, rattling the shutters and shaping large mounds out of the fluid sand. It was getting bitter cold.

"Hinata, do you know why we have a Water Festival?"

The question surprised her and she was quiet for a moment.

"I... always thought it was because... water is so scarce... in the desert. So its like a precious things... worth celebrating?"

"I thought so too... before I became Kazekage." There was another long pause before Gaara spoke again, "But that is not so. What is precious to us, to my people, is not water."

"Oh... but, what is it then?" Hinata was curious now. It was strange, the Kazekage telling her these things.

"Why, the desert itself." Gaara waved a hand over everything. "Water reminds us of what the desert is not; the way an empty space reminds us of a house or a tree. Water reminds us of what a desert cannot be and that imperfection, that fault of its, makes the desert all the more real, like a part of us."

Hinata swallowed. " A perfect desert... would not be a desert at all." Gaara turned and fixed her with another intent gaze, "That's a beautiful way to put it." No hint of admiration or awe; just quiet, matter-of-fact.

Hinata felt a little bolder now, like a child honoured upon hearing a secret of her sensei's from his very own mouth. "May I ask you something?"

"Yes?"

"Please don't take this question the wrong way."

"I won't."

"What's... so beautiful about the desert?"

He etched a flower in the sand with his toe, "The desert never changes, yet it is always changing. It expects nothing of you that it doesn't expect of itself. It remembers you and forgets itself."

"Is that... what the desert means to you?"

Gaara thought for a moment. "It's different for everybody - even at different stages of their lives. When I was a boy, the desert was a friend. Someone I could trust and who would never turn me away."

"And... now?"

"I am still a boy." No sentimentality, no weight; just quiet, matter-of-fact.

---

When Hinata awoke, she was lying with her back on the sand. Gaara was no longer beside her and there was no sound of a carnival, no sound at all.

Hinata kept her eyes close. Somehow, she knew the Konoha delegation had left and that Sunagakure had crumbled into dust. That when she opened her eyes, all she would see would be sand.

_The absence of water._ It was a beautiful metaphor.

"Hinata! Hinata! Oh, I'm SO glad we found you! We were SO worried about you! You just disappeared."

Hanabi, of course, would be the last person with her at the end of the world. The strong girl pulled her upright and threw a fistful of cold water in her face. "There!"

"Hanabi, what..."

"Father was furious. You were supposed to accompany him to the ceremony, stupid! In the end, _I_ had to go and it was SO boring. I mean, even with that TOTALLY hot Kazekage..."

Hinata closed her ears to the rest of the tirade and drained her face with a hand. She felt the water form tiny beads between the robe and her flesh and it made her shiver.

"Where is..."

"We're waiting for you, at the carriage. We're going back to Konoha."

"But the week-long festival...?"

"Papa says he doesn't feel welcome. Something about the desert... disturbs him. Anyway, we're going and I've got your things. Hurry!"

Hinata stood up unsteadily and blinked twice. True enough, she saw the carriage at the end of the narrow street. Her father was standing impatiently at the door, his forehead in a tight, angry frown.

"The Kazekage...?"

"On business. He left early this morning."

"Oh." Hinata looked over the desert again. It was formless and passive, nothing like the haunting, imaginative plain it had been the night before.

It was then that she understood what the desert meant to her. _What is not reminds us of what is._ "Really?" she said, "But you just threw him in my face."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. Let's go." Hinata turned, and did not look back at the desert again.

* * *

End 


End file.
